Web sites: Oskar Schindler | German industrialist | Britannica.com Schindler Britannica Web sites Articles from Britannica encyclopedias for elementary and high school students Oskar Schindler Student Encyclopedia Ages 11 and up 1908 74 German businessman Oskar Schindler aided by his wife and staff sheltered approximately 1 100 Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust of World War II He did this by employing them in his factories which supplied the German army during the war Submit a Web site

Oskar Schindler -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia active in the emerging black market Thanks to the network of German contacts he had arranged through liberal bribes he secured the lease of a formerly Jewish owned enamelware factory He renamed the facility Deutsche Emaillewaren Fabrik Oskar Schindler known as Emalia and commenced production with a small staff Three months later he had several hundred employees seven of whom were Jewish By 1942 nearly half of the workers at the expanded plant were Jewish Ostensibly cheap labour Schindler paid their salaries to the SS In the fall of that year the Płaszów work camp opened nearby and by February 1943 it was under the command of the notoriously sadistic SS officer Amon Göth who would be executed after the war Capitalizing on the officer s appetite for drink and other luxury items available mainly on the black market Schindler cultivated his friendship by ensuring a constant stream of them to the villa from which he oversaw the camp Schindler thus managed to prevail upon Göth to create a separate camp for his Jewish workers where they were free of the abuses suffered at Płaszów Though Schindler s motivations prior to this point are unclear many scholars interpret his efforts to extricate his workers from Płaszów as indication that his concern for them was not purely financial When in August 1944 his factory was decommissioned Schindler successfully petitioned to have it moved to Brnĕnec Brünnlitz in the Sudetenland close to his hometown Schindler and his associates composed a list of Jewish workers that he deemed essential for the new factory and submitted it for approval to the Jewish labour office With several versions of the list known it is difficult to determine how many people were ultimately selected Though those chosen were diverted for a time to other concentration camps

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